Spoilers ahead for Memento. One of my cinema pet peeves is when people refer to the structure of Christopher Nolan's Memento as "a gimmick." A gimmick is a hook that serves no point. It gets your attention, but by its very nature has no payoff. If Nolan dressed Guy Pearce in a chicken costume for the entirety of the movie and never explained it, that would be a gimmick. The reverse-chronology of Memento is essential to its power because it's the only way to put the audience in the mindset of its brain-damaged detective, Leonard Shelby (…

Christopher Nolan’s 2006 film The Prestige is obsessed with the cost of deception. Its two protagonists—rival magicians Albert Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman)—commit to deceiving audiences, but in the end, their deceptions reach far beyond the stage. In their final confrontation, Albert shoots Robert for framing Albert’s twin brother for Robert’s murder. Robert has faked his own death through a new technology he purchased from Nikola Tesla (David Bowie). The technology creates a clone, but as part of his act, Robert never knows which Angier will get to perform The Prestige (the …

Emma Roberts is a young woman trapped in a deceptively beautiful cage in director Alice Waddington's upcoming film Paradise Hills. The trailer for Roberts' upcoming film arrived this week. Paradise Hills goes big on the visuals, promising to take viewers into a dystopian world unlike they've never seen before — and probably won't want to leave. But alas, this is a dark sci-fi tale, as the trailer quickly reveals. The trailer sticks closely to the film's protagonist, Uma (Roberts). It opens with Uma waking up in a room painted to mimic the outdoors. Unsure of how …